For this week's exercise, we were tasked with labeling various features in the San Francisco Bay area. Below is the map I created:
I chose Sitka font
for this project because I felt like a serif font helped me read smaller type.
For each respective category, I changed the font size from large to small
depending on the relative size of the object being labeled within each
category. For example, when labeling the
water features, I used the largest font on the Pacific Ocean, the next largest
for the San Francisco Bay, and so on. I
used this same philosophy when naming all of the general features with the
largest being San Francisco, Marin Peninsula, and so on. I created a visual hierarchy by
separating each category of feature by at least 2 font sizes with the water and
general features.
I used 8-point font
on all parks and topographic names and 10-point font size for the Golden Gate
Bridge. I placed most every label on top
of the respective feature and used halos or shadows with different colors to
represent the various categories. This
helped each font stand out amongst a busy background. I used a white halo for
the general category, a green halo for parks, and a yellow shadow for the
geographic features. I did not use a
halo for the water features or the Golden Gate Bridge. I did use Italic font
for the water features, however. I also used a callout for Lake Merced and the
Golden Gate Bridge.
